THE TIDAL WAVE
There was only one man to speak to, and it being the nature of the beast--so he harshly put it to himself--to be absolutely impelled to speech at such times, Mount Dunstan laid bare his breast to him, tearing aside all the coverings pride would have folded about him.The man was, of course, Penzance, and the laying bare was done the evening after the story of Red Godwyn had been told in the laurel walk.
They had driven home together in a profound silence, the elder man as deep in thought as the younger one.Penzance was thinking that there was a calmness in having reached sixty and in knowing that the pain and hunger of earlier years would not tear one again.And yet, he himself was not untorn by that which shook the man for whom his affection had grown year by year.It was evidently very bad--very bad, indeed.
He wondered if he would speak of it, and wished he would, not because he himself had much to say in answer, but because he knew that speech would be better than hard silence.
"Stay with me to-night," Mount Dunstan said, as they drove through the avenue to the house."I want you to dine with me and sit and talk late.I am not sleeping well."They often dined together, and the vicar not infrequently slept at the Mount for mere companionship's sake.Sometimes they read, sometimes went over accounts, planned economies, and balanced expenditures.A chamber still called the Chaplain's room was always kept in readiness.It had been used in long past days, when a household chaplain had sat below the salt and left his patron's table before the sweets were served.They dined together this night almost as silently as they had driven homeward, and after the meal they went and sat alone in the library.
The huge room was never more than dimly lighted, and the far-off corners seemed more darkling than usual in the insufficient illumination of the far from brilliant lamps.Mount Dunstan, after standing upon the hearth for a few minutes smoking a pipe, which would have compared ill with old Doby's Sunday splendour, left his coffee cup upon the mantel and began to tramp up and down--out of the dim light into the shadows, back out of the shadows into the poor light.
"You know," he said, "what I think about most things-- you know what I feel.""I think I do."
"You know what I feel about Englishmen who brand themselves as half men and marked merchandise by selling themselves and their houses and their blood to foreign women who can buy them.You know how savage I have been at the mere thought of it.And how I have sworn----""Yes, I know what you have sworn," said Mr.Penzance.
It struck him that Mount Dunstan shook and tossed his head rather like a bull about to charge an enemy.
"You know how I have felt myself perfectly within my rights when I blackguarded such men and sneered at such women--taking it for granted that each was merchandise of his or her kind and beneath contempt.I am not a foul-mouthed man, but I have used gross words and rough ones to describe them.""I have heard you."
Mount Dunstan threw back his head with a big, harsh laugh.He came out of the shadow and stood still.
"Well," he said, "I am in love--as much in love as any lunatic ever was--with the daughter of Reuben S.Vanderpoel.
There you are--and there _I_ am!"
"It has seemed to me," Penzance answered, "that it was almost inevitable.""My condition is such that it seems to ME that it would be inevitable in the case of any man.When I see another man look at her my blood races through my veins with an awful fear and a wicked heat.That will show you the point I have reached." He walked over to the mantelpiece and laid his pipe down with a hand Penzance saw was unsteady."In turning over the pages of the volume of Life," he said, "Ihave come upon the Book of Revelations."
"That is true," Penzance said.
"Until one has come upon it one is an inchoate fool," Mount Dunstan went on."And afterwards one is--for a time at least--a sort of madman raving to one's self, either in or out of a straitjacket--as the case may be.I am wearing the jacket --worse luck! Do you know anything of the state of a man who cannot utter the most ordinary words to a woman without being conscious that he is ****** mad love to her? This afternoon I found myself telling Miss Vanderpoel the story of Red Godwyn and Alys of the Sea-Blue Eyes.I did not make a single statement having any connection with myself, but throughout I was calling on her to think of herself and of me as of those two.I saw her in my own arms, with the tears of Alys on her lashes.I was ****** mad love, though she was unconscious of my doing it.""How do you know she was unconscious?" remarked Mr.
Penzance."You are a very strong man."
Mount Dunstan's short laugh was even a little awful, because it meant so much.He let his forehead drop a moment on to his arms as they rested on the mantelpiece.
"Oh, my God!" he said.But the next instant his head lifted itself."It is the mystery of the world--this thing.A tidal wave gathering itself mountain high and crashing down upon one's helplessness might be as easily defied.It is supposed to disperse, I believe.That has been said so often that there must be truth in it.In twenty or thirty or forty years one is told one will have got over it.But one must live through the years--one must LIVE through them--and the chief feature of one's madness is that one is convinced that they will last forever.""Go on," said Mr.Penzance, because he had paused and stood biting his lip."Say all that you feel inclined to say.
It is the best thing you can do.I have never gone through this myself, but I have seen and known the amazingness of it for many years.I have seen it come and go.""Can you imagine," Mount Dunstan said, "that the most damnable thought of all--when a man is passing through it--is the possibility of its GOING? Anything else rather than the knowledge that years could change or death could end it!
